Company Profile: Storytel

Since Storytel, a streaming subscription service where you can listen to audiobooks and read e-books through an app on your phone, launched in 2005, more than 1 million audiobooks have been listened to through the service.

Originally, Jon Hauksson (System Architect and head developer) and Jonas Tellander (CEO) founded Storytel under the name BOKiLUR. They later changed the name to Storytel in 2007, mainly to facilitate international expansion.

The company has gone from strength to strength and, last month, Storytel bought Sweden’s oldest publisher, Norstedts Förlagsgrupp, for £12.5m from Swedish co-operative union and retail group KF (Kooperativa Förbundet).

In May, Storytel acquired Danish e-book and audio streaming service Mofibo for £10m, adding at least 50,000 members to its base of approximately 220,000 subscribers. In 2015, Storytel also acquired Swedish publishers Massolit Förlag and B Wahlströms Bokförlag.

How does it work?

Storytel is a digital subscription service that streams audiobooks and e-books for your mobile phone, similar to Spotify. By downloading the app to your phone (iPhone or Android) and paying a subscription of 18 €/month, you are able to access to all the books you can read, streamed to you in MP3 format. They offer a combined service that lets you read and listen to the same book at the same time.

Agreements with almost all publishers in Sweden means that Storytel customers can listen to the majority of titles published as audiobooks as soon as they’re released.

Features?

Smart functions in the app include:

– Listen offline

– Increase or decrease the speed of listening, even when the book is being streamed

– Set the audiobook to snooze with the built in sleep function

– Set your own bookmarks and make notes

– Share recommendations with your friends

– Personal recommendations

– Filter languages in settings or under specific categories and sort them in multiple ways in order to find your favourite books

– Adapted for iPad

– Save upcoming books to your bookshelf, get notified when they are released.

– Find the biggest and best book series in our special Series section

– Children’s books divided by age

– Mobile player bubble that follows your browsing in the app

What’s new?

In June 2016, Storytel launched a new format, Storytel Original, exclusively for audio consumers. Titles in the new format will be published in ten episodes – approximately an hour long, with heightened effects and dramatisation.

Throughout 2016, Storytel are set to release around 20 new audiobook series in a variety of genres. The first four titles in the new format were released in June.

Currently, Storytel is available in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Holland and is available in English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish and Swedish.